T-N EDITORIAL: Let’s just pronounce it Argentina

Friday

Jun 26, 2009 at 12:01 AM

The local history writer Louise Bailey likes to open her talks with her recollection of early 1960s anti-poverty initiatives that lift up the poor people of the southern mountains, making sure the folk had roads, water lines, schools and shoes.President Kennedy, she recalled, told the nation that he had “discovered Appalachia.”An eyebrow raised, Mrs. Bailey responds, “I hadn’t known we were missing.”The tale came back to us this week, and it’s Gov. Mark Sanford’s fault.We rise not to condemn the governor’s excellent adventure, which turned out to be something quite apart from a mountain hike. No, what puzzles us is this question of pronunciation. Actually, grates is more the word.Thanks to South Carolina’s most high, newscasters the world over have been talking about the Appalachian Trail. They have been talking about the Appalachian Trail because in the early days of Sanford’s mysterious disappearance, staff members told the press and other state officials that the chief executive was out hiking the Appalachian Trail.We consider it a badge of regional pride that the beloved mountain trail won national attention, even as a poorly executed feint in a subterfuge. The Appalachian Trail signifies man’s core longing for exploration. In present-day America, the AT fulfills the ideal of getting way, of isolation, of man humbled by, at one with and ultimately astride the best of Nature. To hike the Appalachian Trail is to tilt against the windmill arms of cell phones, reporters and Senate majority leaders. On the AT, you don’t read a BlackBerry; you eat the original version.We were really OK with the Appalachian Trail as a fake destination.But what grates is this constant uttering from New York and Washington of our region’s name as the Appalachian Trail, with the third “a” as a long “a.” Not since Appalachian State beat No. 5 Michigan two years ago in one of the biggest upsets in sports history has the name been mispronounced so often by so many.The dictionaries we consulted must be wrong, for they list Appalachian, with a long “a” as the first pronunciation, a short “a” as the second.Our ear is a little more tolerant of a long “a” in Appalachia. The noun form, broadly describing the mountain range from Georgia to Maine, is often pronounced with a long “a” in the middle, with the last syllable starting with an “sh” instead of a “ch” sound.Still, around here, people are more likely to say the noun form with a short “a” and a “ch.”We are admirers of the 2,175-mile hiking trail and of the fine institution in Boone and of the mother of our Blue Ridge Mountains, but we must now rest from the hearing of thy name, especially as rendered by those “from off.”We don’t begrudge Mr. Sanford a trip abroad, exotic though his was. We’re just glad that he really wasn’t on a romantic camping trip exploring the majestic peaks of the Appalachian Trail. Had he been, we would have to hear ad nauseam the national newscasters mangle the name of a region that, like John F. Kennedy, they had only recently discovered.

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